


To Hell in a Handbasket

by NervousAsexual



Category: Half-Life
Genre: Amputation, Canon-Typical Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-05-17
Updated: 2017-07-12
Packaged: 2018-11-02 00:08:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,211
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10932849
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NervousAsexual/pseuds/NervousAsexual
Summary: Barney is injured during a strider attack, and things start to fall apart.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> According to the dates on my old comp book, this was started at some point during 2014 and never finished. Hopefully by making this a weekly thing I can finally finish it.

Alyx Vance had barely enough time to think, "This is all going to hell in a handbasket," before strider fire took out the back wall and the gas main erupted. There was a series of thumps as rebels struck the floor around her and a distictive CLACK as Gordon hit the deck in his HEV suit, barely audible over the strider fire that grazed directly over their heads.

Silence. Bright flashes of light through the darkness. Alyx shut her eyes tight and thought of her father, Gordon, Dr Kleiner, Barney, Dog. At least it isn't the citadel again, she thought. There are places far worse than this.

When she opened them again the flashes of light had stopped and she could hear resistance members beginning to mumble and stir and check the sky. There was now, Alyx realized, sunlight pouring through the dust and smoke and through the hole where the kitchen's back wall used to be.

Alyx hugged the floor for only a minute, though the sounds of striders were fading into the distance. At the end of that minute she saw the medic lying beside her with deep red blood matting the back of her head.

"Oh my god." Alyx pushed herself onto her knees. Immediately her nose burned with ash and gas and charred hair. "Are you alright?"

"I think I'll be okay," the medic replied. "Just as soon as... I decide which way is way is..."

"Who's hurt?" Alyx asked, louder, and a number of shaken voices chorused in response. "Gordon?"

The smoke had thinned a little. Now she could see him sitting up awkwardly in his HEV suit. He pushed his glasses back onto his nose, observed the crowbar in his right hand, and gave her a thumbs up.

She smiled--thank god, nobody's been... and then she remembered a voice she hadn't heard yet. "Wait, where's Barney? Who's seen Barney?"

Through the still-clearing dust she could just make out a handful of worried faces peering back. No one responded.

"Where was he standing when the strider hit? Someone must have seen him!"

"I don't..."

"There's someone over there!" a voice called from near the blinding source of the light. "But... but he's gonna need..."

She stumbled forward, nearly tripping over the injured medic in her haste. At the last moment Gordon's hand closed on the back of her shirt, righting her. They moved together, Alyx shading her eyes, trying desperately to see. Behind her Gordon, too, picked up momentum, and in the end it was the hand of another rebel, grabbing her leg, that stopped them from plowing straight into him.

"Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god..."

He'd been square in the crosshairs when the strider hit. One of the civilians had crawled up to his side, messy tears and mucus running down his face and turning grey with ash, and was trying desperately to push the chunk of concrete wall from Barney's shoulder.

Barney's eyes were open, blinking slowly against the dust. A slab of concrete four inches thick pinned his shoulder to the floor, and a thick piece of steel cable jutted out across the back of his neck.

"We'll get you out of there," she promised, and when her shadow fell over him he looked up at her. That was a good sign, right? "Gordon!" When she threw her shoulder against the concrete nothing gave, and she clunked down against Barney. He flinched. His eyes shut tightly. "Gordon, get the gravity gun!"

Gordon perked up at the sound of his name and scrambled about on his knees, searching in the dust with his hands. He grabbed something and then he was at her side. The concrete blasted up on edge, hovering almost balletically on the jagged rim.

Alyx and the civilian both grabbed Barney. Though he gasped and tried to move away, they managed to tug him just out of harm's way as the concrete crashed down and the floor groaned.

"Our luck, they heard us." Alyx grabbed Gordon's leg and pulled him down. Barney had gone stiff as a post, his head angled awkwardly away from his crushed shoulder. "You carry him. I'll get somebody to help me with her. People, we gotta move."

"But where will we go?" The civilian was still holding Barney's legs. "There isn't a safe place left in this whole city."

They all looked to Barney, for ideas, for support, but he only gasped in response.

"Dr. Kleiner's," Alyx said suddenly. She looked to Gordon, and he to her. "It's the last place I know of, and if worse comes to worst we might be able to hold out long enough for most of them to teleport out to Dad."

Gordon nodded.

The enthusiasm carried over as he pulled Barney up to his feet, and somewhere in Barney a switch flipped from catatonia to panic. With his good left arm he shoved into Gordon's chest. The right arm practically fluttered like a limp flag in a breeze as he butted the top of his head against Gordon's chin, over and over and over.

"Stop!" Alyx grabbed him by the good arm, dragging him back. "That isn't helping! That isn't going to..."

Gordon let go of him, but before Barney could collapse backward he had him again, this time by the back of the head and back of the shoulders. He pushed Barney's chin up over his shoulder and held him there.

"It's his shoulder," suggested a second medic. He scooted toward them on his hands and knees. "You're hurting it when you move him.

Against the HEV suit Barney's breaths were quick and shallow.

"Try bandaging his arm down. Use... here, use this medkit. I'd do it myself but I don't know what the hell I'm doing either. I just carry the supplies."


	2. Chapter 2

Dr Kleiner had almost coaxed Lamar down off the radio screens when the front of the Breen's Private Reserve machine swung open, driving her up onto the rafters. Dr Kleiner swung around, ready to chew out the intruder, and instead he found a dozen or more frightened, dusty faces, gathered in the entry, with Alyx at the fore and a slightly cross-eyed medic hanging over her shoulder.

"Oh my goodness," he said, for lack of anything better.

"Striders," Alyx said, and the survivors poured in around her. Gordon clumped up and dragging along at his shoulder was Barney, whose arm was bandaged up against his chest. His eyes were barely open.

"How many did you lose?" The survivors swarmed all over the lab, dropping the injured in corners and against crates, climbing up to the windows to stand watch, cramming into the closet and the space behind the computers.

"None that we know of." Alyx jerked her head toward Gordon. "But Barney..."

Gordon let him down on the floor and Barney didn't move, didn't blink, didn't even seem to breathe.

"Oh," said Dr Kleiner. "Oh dear."

"Doc, you gotta give us more than that." Alyx and the medic limped off.

"I'm not that kind of doctor!" he called after her, but she was gone. "Well," he said, digging into his pocket, "he's in shock. So good thing I always carry one of these, eh, Gordon?"

Gordon looked up at his name, but when Dr Kleiner took a morphine syringe from his pocket he jumped back.

"Where're my scissors?" Dr Kleiner patted at his pockets with his free hand. "Don't look so alarmed, Gordon, it isn't for you. Do you think you could..."

In response Gordon reached down and ripped the left sleeve of Barney's MP uniform open.

"Oh," Kleiner said. "Alright, I suppose that will work too." He crouched down and put the   
needle to Barney's upper arm. "But I'll still need at least scissors to deal with the..."

"Doc." Alyx reappeared. The medic was gone from her shoulder. "Doc, we gotta get some of these people out of here. I'm going to start sending them through the teleport."

"To... what?" Dr Kleiner took the empty syringe from Barney's arm and stuffed it into a locker. Gordon put a thumb over the spot of blood that appeared on Barney's arm.

"To White Forest. You don't have the resources to take care of all these people here."

"No. No, I suppose not." Kleiner looked around at the survivors, peering at him with varying degrees of shock and anxiety. He rubbed a hand against his cheek but it was still cold. "Oh dear."

"Gordon can help me. Right, Gordon?"

Gordon squeezed Barney's arm and nodded.

"Alright. But start with the people who aren't hurt so bad, okay? Barney stays here, and that medic can't go through transport like that."

"Right." Alyx let out a shrill, piercing whistle and the survivors began to glance over in her direction. "Okay, people, we're going to get you out of here. Start forming a nice orderly line right here and we'll get you all through."

Gordon squeezed Barney's arm again. He looked up at Dr Kleiner, and behind his thick glasses he looked a little sad.

"Don't worry," Kleiner told him, with as much cheerfulness as he could muster. "I'll take care of him. He'll be just fine." As Gordon got back to his feet Kleiner fiddled with the unfamiliar metrocop armor. There had to be some way of getting him out of it, but whoever had designed the armor obviously hadn't given much thought to support practicality. He felt around and unbuttoned whatever buttons he could find and unbuckled the buckles and finally, after what felt like an hour of mindlessly groping, he pulled on the jacket and it came away.

Just to get a better idea of what he was dealing with Kleiner undid the binding keeping Barney's arm against his body and tried to pull the sleeve down over his arm.

It was... bad.

He looked away from the wound and saw that Barney's eyes were open, just a little. He tried to rearrange his face into a more comforting expression. "It's not that bad."

But, he realized, Barney wasn't actually seeing anything. He reached out and closed the eyes, and then went back to work on that arm.


	3. Chapter 3

In Kleiner's hidden lab they put a mattress, tossing it up on the loft near the window. His first night in the MCs he forgot the code to the lab, fell asleep briefly against the vending machine until one of the underground rebels found him and took pity.

"You look extraordinarily pale," Dr Kleiner remarked, handing the rebel a packet of radio parts.

After a day of hearing only the mechanically distorted voices of other metrocops, Barney's mind could only sluggishly try to understand. Without a word he hefted himself onto the ladder, every muscle and joint groaning as he did so. One rung at a time he hobbled up. His arms ached and pounded and he could have sworn he still felt the kick of the pulse rifle. A lot of good his Black Mesa Blue Shift training did him--what felt like an eternity of picking at paper targets with a rinky-dink Glock.

"I've got to be going, Kleiner," the rebel said. "They're expecting me before too long."

"Yes, yes, of course. Be careful out there!"

At last, at last, he dragged himself over the final rung and threw himself face first onto the mattress. He could see something scientific looking turning itself over like an engine or something on the wall across the room, or possibly he was hallucinating. He couldn't be sure how he wanted to react to this.

"Goodbye and good luck," Kleiner called, and he heard the vending machine close. Kleiner came over and stood on a crate so that just his eyes peeked over the edge of the loft. "Barney?"

"Yeah, doc?"

"Are you hungry?"

He tried and failed to stifle a yawn so big it nearly snapped his jaw. "I don't really feel like eatin' headcrab tonight."

"I would never eat headcrab." Kleiner sounded indignant. "It's much more interesting to study them. No, I have some cans of lima beans and some potatoes. I don't have a can opener, but I could probably rig up the laser..."

"Not tonight. Too tired."

Kleiner nodded slowly. "Ah. Very well." He hopped down off the crate and out of Barney's view. "If you change your mind be sure to let me know."

His entire body ached and he could barely keep his eyes open but he'd overshot the threshold of sleep and couldn't even doze. "Wouldn'ta taken you for a vegetarian, doc."

Kleiner laughed. "I am no such thing. I kept kosher for a time, although that has become increasingly difficult. No, I would feel uncomfortable eating headcrabs. They're fascinating. The way they locamote, their choice of prey, their... slightly parasitic relationship with said prey..."

_Slightly?_

"And what was their prey of choice before the resonance cascade? They are too perfectly acclimated to the size and shape of your typical human skull. What I'd like to do is compare notes with the vortigaunts and try to determine how the headcrabs have adapted. If it has something to do with the cascade or with teleportation we could possibly recreate it, cause adaptation in humans. Perhaps we could even find a way to arm ourselves against the Combine."

Barney's head was throbbing and he didn't know what all of those words meant but it sounded pretty bad. "You want to change humans?"

"I wouldn't phrase it that way. I want to help them adapt."

"Yeah, you and the Combine both." He sat up and straightened his body armor. Kleiner watched him do it from down at his desk and said nothing. "Spend a little too much time listening to the propaganda, doc?"

"No, Barney," Dr Kleiner said quietly. "I would rather not coerce people into my research. And anyway--" He straightened up, turned to observe a blinking computer screen. "--at the moment we have much bigger goals to pursue. I'm hoping to have localized small-scale transport up and running within six months and after that start preparations to teleport humans. Not far, mind you, though I would like to have a second facility to send volunteers to so as not to draw too much power to this particular lab. But until then I will work with what I have. This little cactus, you see, would be good enough for an initial run. It is living, or at least I think it is living, and if I can successfully send it through a transport with minimal impact on the plant that has huge ramifications for..."

Barney stopped listening and lay back down. If some one had told him two years ago this was where he'd be, joining the ranks of war criminals and fascists, he'd have shot them on principal. 

He hoped--hoped with everything he had--that Eli Vance knew what he was doing.


	4. Chapter 4

They got the last of the rebels through the teleport well after dark. Gordon took a few breaks, once to help hang blackout curtains, once to fetch some water, but Alyx kept sending them through, one after another after another. When the last medic was confirmed as being safely through, she shut off the power and realized that the whole of the teleport room smelled of smoke. The teleport wasn't meant to handle so many passengers in so little time.

She wasn't tired--there was no way she could sleep after all this--but she knew if she sat down she would never get up again. So instead she looked for Gordon and finally found him sitting in the storage closet, Lamar on his lap, dozing.

"Wake up," she said, and when he didn't she nudged him with her foot. "Gordon."

He jerked awake and pulled a crowbar from god only knew where, looking around suspiciously. When he looked up at her, he relaxed.

"We should get moving," she told him. "We've still got places to do. Things to go."

Gordon smiled, she wasn't sure at what, and patted the floor beside him.

"No, come on. We can sleep later."

Gordon gave Lamar a pat, and she gave a little trilling purr.

Her legs didn't really want to stand here, that was true, but she sighed mightily so that Gordon and Lamar would know she didn't want this herself. She leaned against the wall and slid down and was sure she was never going to get up again.

"Don't you dare tell Barney," she said, scratching Lamar's back so that she did the little butt wiggle. "If he found out I fraternized with a head-humper..."

Gordon solemnly put a hand to his chest.

With not a little bit of relief she put her head on his shoulder and closed her eyes. She could stay here forever... except, of course, that the world was ending outside, the closet was hot and humid, and the lab itself smelled of blood and burnt hair and headcrab mess.

"We gotta get out of here," she tried to say, and mangled the whole thing with a huge yawn.

* * *

 She woke up abruptly, not entirely sure where she was but knowing damn sure where she wasn't. She wasn't in White Forest. She was supposed to be in White Forest.

The room was dark and she stumbled into crates, into the side of a human-sized capsule, and into the wall.

By the time she got the door open she remembered the explosion, the striders, the lab, but she didn't dare think for a minute that things were okay. Gordon would have disappeared while she was asleep, not to be seen for another decade or more. The lab would have been discovered. Barney would have...

She ran full tilt into Dr. Kleiner on her way back out and over his shoulder she saw the medic with the head injury sitting with her back against the sliding panel of Breen's Reserve. She looked fine. Except for the blood on her shirt and the bandage on her head, she looked downright healthy. "Hi."

"Hi," the medic whispered shyly.

Alyx stepped back and looked Kleiner up and down. He stood awkwardly and took it, pushing his glasses back up his nose.

"Gordon?" she asked at last.

There was a clanking from behind her. She turned to look and Gordon was leaning out of the loft, his own glasses sitting askew.

"And Bar..."

But she stopped herself as she saw him on the bloodstained mattress near the back wall.

"He's okay," Kleiner said as she walked past. "Alyx? It looks worse than it is."

Barney was curled up on himself under a blanket but she could see the bandages poking out from underneath. She stopped at the edge of the mattress and hesitated for just a moment. Then she pulled down the blanket--just a little, only a little.

His arm was gone. His arm and part of his shoulder.

"Did you hear me? He's going to be fine now. Alyx?"

It was a silly thing to think, but the first thought in her head was, "Barney is not going to like this."

As long as he's with us, she thought, putting the blanket back. As long as he's here.

It was more than she could have hoped for.


End file.
